Josh and Augusta staff perform for students
By Josh Wantsreet
Serving with the Augusta Heritage Center
Elkins, West Virginia, a small town tucked away in the east-central part of the mountain state has the unique distinction of being home to many musicians who play traditional Appalachian “old time” music. Elkins is also home of the Augusta Heritage Center, a non-profit organization that began conducting music, crafts and dance workshops as well as concerts, dances and audio and video documentation beginning in 1973 and celebrating its fiftieth year in 2023.
Some of the projects that I have helped with while serving at the Augusta Heritage Center since January 2023 have included a digitization project that involves cataloging slide images for archival purposes. I have cataloged more than one thousand slides and their digital images as part of a new cataloging format for archived material. The slides range from pictures of traditional musicians and artisans, festivals and fairs, folk art, pictures from past Augusta Heritage Center concerts, workshops and performances and old gravestones.
I also assisted with a new, after-school strings program that provided fiddle, banjo and guitar instruction to local children in grades fourth through twelve. Students were provided loaner instruments from Smakula Fretted Instruments as part of the program to use during the duration of their lessons with the exception of a few who owned their own instruments. Students attended weekly classes for twelve weeks that culminated in a public performance at the Arts Center in Elkins to a sold-out crowd. These classes are one example of how cultural traditions continue to be passed down to younger generations in West Virginia.
Nadia Tarnawsky at North Elementary School
Another project I helped with was the final in a series of cultural presentations at four elementary schools in Elkins by guests with varied backgrounds. In February 2023, the presenter for the series was Nadia Tarnawsky, a Ukrainian-American who taught a total of approximately six hundred students about traditional Ukrainian food, dance and other folkways. I also assisted with a weekend-long singing workshop where students learned from master singers ranging in songs and styles from classic country, traditional old time, bluegrass and gospel. I created blog content for the Augusta Heritage Center and promoted upcoming events on social media. As an AFNHA AmeriCorps member I organized the lineup for the 2023 Live on the Lawn summer concert series at the Beverly Heritage Center in Beverly, West Virginia featuring free monthly acoustic performances from May through September by local musicians (held outside when weather permits).
Josh and Doug Van Gundy performing at Live on the Lawn
My upcoming major project will be a collection of oral interviews with several musicians in Elkins who play traditional music, but unlike older generations, were not necessarily “born into” a family of musicians or even necessarily raised in a community with very many traditional musicians to learn from. In my interviews, several questions that I plan to ask are, how the musicians were first exposed to traditional Appalachian music, what sparked their interest in learning to play traditional music, who were their primary influences and who did they learn from, why do they think traditional music is important and, if they were originally from outside of the Appalachian region, why did they choose to move to the area. After the interviews are complete, they will be stored and accessible in the Augusta Heritage Center’s archives and online site at www.augustaartsandculture.org.
